Heretofore, there has been disclosed apparatus for supporting FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) work that involves predicting a possible failure of a product, analyzing its effects on the product and extracting the cause of the failure (e.g., see Patent Document 1). This support apparatus is designed to prepare FMEA sheets. An FMEA sheet contains such items as the name of a component, the function of the component, the mode in which the component failed (failure mode), the effects of the feature on the product, the influence rate of the failure, the cause of the failure, the incidence rate of the failure, design management for failure prevention, the defection rate of the failure, and the importance of the failure (=influence rate×incidence rate×detection rate). Specifically, the sheet may describe, as one record depicting “batteries” as a component constituting part of a product “electric torch” for example, the function of “supplying a miniature bulb with power”, the failure mode in which “the supply of power is cut off”, the effects of the failure entailing “no light”, the cause of the failure as “dead batteries”, and design management involving “verifying the remaining battery level.”
The support apparatus is explained below in detail. A storage device of the support apparatus stores function model data made up of a function deployment section and a component list section, the function deployment section representing broken-down functions in tiers for implementing the functionality of the product. In the function model data, function nodes as elements of the function deployment section are relevant to component nodes as elements of the component list section. Also in the function deployment section, failure mode nodes and failure-affected nodes are input in relation to the function nodes. And in the component list section, failure cause data is input in relation to the component nodes, and design management data is input in relation to the failure cause data. The failure-affected nodes are accompanied by input influence rates; the failure cause data is accompanied by input incidence rates, and the design management data is accompanied by input detection rates.
And the support apparatus displays on a display device the above-described function model data, and prepares FMEA-related data based on the function model data. For example, upon preparation of one FMEA record, the designer first selects a failure mode node from the function model data and inputs the selected node to the FMEA record. This triggers a search through the function model data for the function nodes relevant to the failure mode node in question, automatically listing the failure-affected nodes relevant to the function nodes. Thereafter, the designer selects the relevant failure-affected node from the list and adds the selected node to the above FMEA record. And the component nodes relevant to the above-mentioned function nodes are automatically listed. The designer then selects the relevant component node from the list and adds the selected node to the above-mentioned FMEA record. The failure cause data relevant to the above component node is also listed automatically. The designer then selects the relevant failure cause data from the list and adds the selected data to the above FMEA record. The design management data relevant to the above component node is also listed automatically. The designer then selects the relevant design management data from the list and adds the selected data to the above-mentioned FMEA record. As a result, one FMEA record is prepared which includes such information as the failure mode, effects of the failure, influence rate, components involved, cause of the failure, incidence rate, design management, and detection rate.